Year Of The Dog

Chapter 1 - Karma doesn't ignore loose ends...

ONE…

“Hank, it’s almost one o’clock, do you plan to get out of your robe – today?”

Cleo Rule stood on the other side the screen door to her husband’s garage attic office. The midday sun was at her back casting her slender shape in silhouette.

“Really, is it that late already?” Retired CSU History Professor Hank Rule pivoted in his vintage oak desk chair, to face his wife of thirty-five years.

From a corner window an early afternoon sun hit only one side of his Hank’s face. The other half of his coffee-colored skin was in shadow. “Shit! I’ve been at my desk since eight this morning and what little I’ve written is crap.”

With, her own brand of ancient Korean wisdom, Cleo spoke gently, but frankly. “It’s been eighteen months now do you think you should see someone?”

Cleo opened the screen door then stepped into the cluttered, room. She picked her way to an antique piano stool - the only other place to sit.

“You mean a psychiatrist?”

She rested one arm on a pile of four reference books stacked at one end of an antique library table. The narrow table was at an angle to the north wall between Hank’s roll-top desk and the east wall, of overstuffed bookshelves.

With each passing decade the Colorado State professor had filled his twenty-foot by twenty-foot space with books and reference papers that typically accompanied university teaching, research and publishing. 

His office was significantly larger than Cleo’s at her bookstore, but with less usable space. Hank was reluctant to part with anything. With two dated laptops, three vintage computers and monitors - he also kept original paper files in three tall metal file cabinets.

Their four grown sons described their father’s office as: the-techno-museum.

Hank’s first cell phone was in a box with thirty-year old computer cables. The box of cables was on the same shelf as his 1988 IBM computer and monitor - that read six-inch floppy disks. A nine-pound, still functioning Toshiba laptop was on the shelf above the vintage IBM, beside Hank’s second computer that read three-inch file data disks.

On the uppermost shelf was a clear plastic bin where each of Professor Rule’s former cell phones had been ‘laid-to-rest’.

Cardboard file boxes were stacked in random columns containing research material from published papers, specifically the research data for both his masters and doctoral thesis. Other files held additional research documentation he planned to use for potential, future papers.

After Hank retired Mrs. Rule expected they could find several days to purge his office together. However, at the height of The Count Of Baldpate investigation, Professor Harrison Rule and Estes Park Sheriff Claire Gage were inundated with media intensity and numerous rounds of public speaking obligations.

When the Baldpate investigation had run its course Hank immediately dived into research for a book. He hoped the new material could make sense of a disturbing era of history that he had missed, exposed by the Baldpate case.  An era so concealed, its discovery had caused the death of several people including Hank’s best friend, Larimer County Sheriff Juan Mendoza.

And naturally over the subsequent months since, the piles of additional research material became wedged into the few spare gaps that remained in Hank’s home office.

Cleo maintained steady eye contact with her husband, a man she knew so well. “Maybe not a psychiatrist, maybe a talk therapist. You know everyone in the Psychology Department at C.S.U.”

Hank smiled then stood and extended both of his arms to grasp both of Cleo’s hands. Pulling her to stand in front of him, his arms encircled her tiny frame. “I have you to talk to.”

At six feet Hank Rule was like a bear with paws hugging a sapling. His wife, at just five feet tall almost disappeared surrounded by two wide flannel sleeves.

Cleo’s head rested against her husband’s chest. “But you haven’t been talking to me,” she spoke into his sleeve, “not really.”

Hank kept her close. “I thought I could get over Juan’s death on my own - in time.” Tears stung behind his deep brown eyes, threatening.

“No, my darling hero, we’re not supposed to get over the death of anyone we knew well, respected and loved.”

Cleo lifted her head looking up at the aging, but handsome face that had caused her many sleepless nights after they first met.

“However, we are supposed to keep living at our absolute best, until it’s our time to go.”

**Sequel to: “The Count Of Baldpate”

Author website - www.patchworkpublishing.com